The Flyer Solutions Blog

The Cost of "Free"

2008-07-16T15:42:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves free stuff. After all, why pay money for something you can get without forfeiting any of your hard earned cash? I am not the first to say this, and certainly will not be the last, but FREE always has a cost - maybe not a direct monetary cost, but a true cost nonetheless.

For example, do you use a "free" internet service to promote your listings? If so, you may be surprised at all the little extras that "free" comes with. Like competing advertisements on your listings, limited features and usability, and unnecessary time consumption. It makes no sense for a business to give away their services without getting anything in return... there is always a return.

How many leads, what amount of sales, and how much money might you be losing from visitors who click away from your listings to visit a competitor's advertisement? It makes no sense for you to let competitors advertise in your area, yet this is what you may be doing by using a "free" site or service.

Oftentimes, businesses or services will provide free features with some sort of purchase or membership. While this isn't purely free either, they are tools that are available to you at no extra cost, whether you use them or not. The monetary cost to you is disclosed up front, so you know exactly what you are paying for - this type of "free" is great and should be taken advantage of!

Be sure to research where you put your time, effort, content, and listings, and evaluate the cost of free. If it is an acceptable cost, you may have found your spot! If not, if you are losing leads, sales, traffic and credibility, then get out of there fast. Run away and place your assets where they will pay you back.

VALUE is much better than FREE.

Track Your Successes (and Your Failures).

2008-07-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

When you advertise listings online, how effective are your efforts? If that question caught you off guard or left you without a solid answer, then you are not tracking the results of your expended marketing effort!

With the explosive and ongoing growth of the internet over the past 5 years, marketing listings online has become a necessity. Whether you're promoting property listings, eBay listings, auto listings, or any other type of listings, you need to have them on the internet. But just as important, is the information that tells you where your advertising is effective and where it is failing.

Our tracking reports and details give you the essential information you need to view the impact that your online flyers have made in different areas. You can see the website url's that people have viewed and clicked your flyers on, reports on the popularity of your flyers in different areas, and graphs that display the success of your flyer over a specified period of time. If used right, this type of data will allow you to analyze your targeted markets and design a plan that can monetize your online advertising efforts.

Put your efforts where they are paying off. And remember, to do that, you need to know where your efforts are paying off.

Flyer tracking data is available for all paid flyers.

Member of the Month

2008-07-09T14:47:00.000-07:00

A targeted online marketing plan is absolutely vital to a successful business. This month's featured member, Phil Sharp of Abbey Realty, Inc. realizes how true that is! Phil has been a ClassifiedFlyerAds member since 2007, and benefits from the great search engine placement his flyers bring. He strategically titles each of his flyers with phrases that are relevant to his real estate and contracting services, and has seen several of them rank on the first page of Google! Phil has developed two member profiles on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, one for each of his services, which enables him to market to targeted audiences. Phil Sharp obviously has great business sense, and we look forward to his continued success in marketing his services online!

Stand Out on eBay

2008-07-03T11:46:00.000-07:00

In a recent podcast interview, AuctionBytes editor, Ina Steiner, talks with Seth Godin about his new book, "The Dip: A little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick)". During their discussion, Seth talks a little bit about the way he sees eBay commerce:

"eBay is a haystack, and your auction is a needle. You can sharpen your needle all you want, but it's still going to be a needle in a really big haystack. I think the way you win is by getting out of the haystack." Seth goes on to mention several different ways to do that, such as blogging and building your online social network.

Here at ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, we provide a way for eBay sellers to get their listings "out of the haystack" in an efficient and cost-effective way. Through our bulk upload option, eBay sellers can advertise all of their listings online in one step, simply by using the file feed or RSS feed of their listing inventory. Our system automatically places each listing into it's own web page and posts them to over a dozen online search directories.

With each listing on it's own webpage (complete with links to the listing on eBay, photos, and seller contact info), that's major outside-of-the-haystack promotion!

Members Blog Profiles Put Them on Google

2008-06-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

Have you filled out your blog profile yet?

If not, then get to it! Having a completed blog profile can bring pleasantly surprising benefits to your online presence, since we syndicate it to search engines every 30 days. You can talk about yourself, your business, your listings, your town, or anything else you want to tell the world. The most effective blog profiles have a relevant title, keyword rich content, several links, and blog posts. Members who take full advantage of their FREE blog profile often rank on the first page of Google for related search terms. Just go to the “Edit Profile” link after you log in and fill in the “About Me” section. It’s a simple way to make a big impact.

Check out Tina and Darren’s blog profiles to get inspired!

Another Handy eBay Widget

2008-06-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

In response to a great customer request, we recently developed an eBay slideshow widget to showcase your eBay listings in a fancy way. The widget comes in a horizontal or vertical style so you can place it easily on any part of your sites or blog. It transitions through all of your eBay listings at a speed set by the viewer, and comes in seven different color options (because hey, your widget should match your blog!).

The widget displays each eBay listing with a photo and link back to the listing for purchase. Once you customize your widget the way you want it, you can paste the embed code all over the place online to give your eBay listings maximum internet exposure.

You may also want to check out our real estate slideshow widget as well!

Single Property Sites Offer a Marketing Advantage

2008-06-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

In a tough real estate market, agents and realtors need to have an edge when trying to market listings. It can be argued that this edge should be present in any type of market climate, and that is a very good argument indeed. But what better time to start?

While Classified Flyer Ads offers several tools to help real estate professionals obtain that marketing edge, one of the most innovative and sought after tool is the single property website. Put simply, a single property site uses a property's physical address as the website url. For example, if your client lives at 723 Mulberry Lane, the website address for their listing would be www.723MulberryLane.com.

There are three major advantages to having a single listing website:

1) It makes you look good. Your clients will be impressed that you provide a website that is dedicated exclusively to their property for sale. Impressed clients make for great word-of-mouth advertising.
2) It makes the property look good. With the listing placed on an exclusive website, homebuyers will notice the professionalism be encouraged to see the property as valuable.
3) It makes the property accessible. The single property website url can be posted on the sale yard signs and marketing materials for the listing. Any onlookers driving by or recipients of the listing flyers can easily browse the website for photos and info about the property.

At ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, single property websites range from $8.99 to $19.99 and come with your branding, local area information, maps, school data, and more. Members can simply choose the single property site add-on after creating their online flyer. No additional setup is needed!

The Power of Pictures in Your Ads

2008-06-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Whether you create flyers for real estate listings, eBay listings, automotive listings, or anything else, having pictures in your ads is a powerful thing!

Remember, when you use one of our templates for your listings, you have the option to upload 25 additional photos for free!

When buyers search the internet, they want to see what it is that they will be spending their money on. In an online marketplace, buyers have endless options at their fingertips - they don't need to get in their car and drive to the next store or house, they simply need to click a button. That's why it is absolutely essential to provide as many quality photos and images as you can. Your online listing flyers need not only to stand out, but also keep buyers' attention.

So don't pass up the opportunity to show your potential buyers that you are serious about getting their business and attention. After you create your online flyer, take that little extra step to upload additional photos of your listing. You can add all of your photos in one screen, so the process is simpler and faster than ever - and it's free.

No excuses ;) Start adding your additional photos with your next flyer!

Visit us on eBay!

2008-06-13T17:58:00.000-07:00

We are pretty excited around here about our new eBay features - so excited in fact, that we've opened our own eBay store! Using our tried and true syndication technology, Classified Flyer Ads now offers eBay Auction Templates via our eBay Store. We are excited to extend the reach of our services to the sellers on eBay and meet them in their comfort zone.

When you have a minute, come walk through the little red door to our eBay store and sign our guestbook. We look forward to hearing from you!

Local Area Widget for Real Estate Blogs

2008-06-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

We've just created a new widget to help our Real Estate members! The Local Area Widget has a sleek, attractive design and can be customized to fit your needs.

This new tool uses the power of GoogleMaps technology to give visitors and potential homebuyers information about local areas. Take a look:

With links to dozens of local places, this little widget is such a useful reference for visitors to your blog or website, and one that will keep them coming back. All links open in a new window, so buyers will not lose your page.

And as with all of our widgets, this one is free to our members! Have fun with it.

Increased Traffic and Leads for Members

2008-06-04T17:25:00.000-07:00

More traffic in the city is a bad thing, however, more traffic to your listings and website is definitely a good thing! Our members have really been experiencing this truth, as hits to their online flyers have been increasing more every month.

Over the past 18 months ClassifiedFlyerAds.com has experienced a traffic growth rate exceeding 11% per month, in large amount due to increased prospect views of member’s online flyers. In the last 3 months alone, site traffic has steadily increased by 30 – 40 thousand unique visitors per month. This is great news for our members who are looking to establish themselves online and get their listings noticed by buyers.

Go Smart Solutions Director of Business Development, Patrick Thompson reflects, “With the downturn in the economy, more and more people are looking less into traditional methods for advertising their listings such as expensive print media and more into cost-effective emerging technologies like online ad directory syndication. Our surge in membership and site usage bear witness to how well our services are being received."

Congratulations to all our members who have reaped the benefits of increased traffic!

*Go Smart Solutions is the parent company of ClassifiedFlyerAds.com.

Help for Advertising Your eBay Store Items Online

2008-06-02T15:48:00.000-07:00

If you've been keeping up with the latest Classified Flyer Ads news, then you know all about our new feature which allows eBay store owners to advertise their listings to online classified directories. While the process to get started is easy, there are a few things we've done to help out even more.

eBay store owners who are interested in finding out how to use ClassifiedFlyerAds.com to advertise their products, can now view our eBay Advertising video tutorial, or reference our step-by-step illustrated guide before they even sign up.

Since this is a new feature, we want to make sure we are supporting our new members to the fullest extent. If you don't find the answers in the resources on our website, please contact us and give us a chance to help you!

Capture Your Online Leads

2008-05-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

If you’re using ClassifiedFlyerAds.com to list homes, you know that you’re getting lots of good online leads, but how do you ensure you don’t drop the ball and miss a great potential buyer?

Realtor.org offers the 6 Best Practices for Online Leads that include always using your email signature, responding as quickly as you can and treating the lead like a human being. Read more here and don’t let our great leads go to waste!

10 Cool Things About ClassifiedFlyerAds.com

2008-05-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

We know you already realize how cool ClassifiedFlyerAds.com is, but just as a refresher, we’ve created this fun video that highlights our 10 favorite cool things about the site.

Now, we’d love to hear your favorite things about ClassifiedFlyerAds.com. Please share your comments!

ClassifiedFlyerAds Makes “Bid” to Help eBay Sellers Spread the Word

2008-05-23T12:54:00.000-07:00

Are you an eBay addict? Whether you have your own store on the popular site or you just like to purchase goods there, now ClassifiedFlyerAds.com is helping spread the word about items up for bid. A new feature lets eBay store owners advertise their items for sale outside of the eBay site through ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, and visitors to the site can view eBay listings in all their favorite categories.

The new system uses eBay store owners’ RSS feeds to automatically import and create online flyers with their own landing page. The flyers, which link back to the store and are optimized for maximum search engine visibility, are then posted to ClassifiedFlyerAds.com’s list of directories.

“eBay is becoming an increasingly competitive place to sell your wares, and reaching outside the site to advertise items can give store owners an edge,” says Misty Lackie, founder and CEO of Go Smart Solutions, LLC, the parent company of ClassifiedFlyerAds.com. “We created this new tool to give eBay store owners an easy way to get increased exposure for every item they have for sale.”

Let us know what you think!

Homeowners May Be in Denial About Home’s Worth

2008-05-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

How much is your home worth? According to a recent survey conducted by Zillow.com, one of our most popular real estate directories, home-owners are not realistic about their home’s value.

The Zillow® survey of homeowner confidence conducted by Harris Interactive® found that 72 percent of homeowners believe their home's value has increased or stayed the same the past year. However, according to Zillow, the reality is that 75 percent of U.S. homes actually decreased in value from the same period a year ago.

They also found that homeowners in the Northeast are closer to reality on their home’s value, while those in the West were way more optimistic regarding the number of homes whose value has decreased compared with the actual numbers.

"While we assume there's a fair bit of owner denial reflected in these results, we also believe a large portion of the population simply isn't paying close attention to their housing market because they're not currently looking to sell or finance," says Stan Humphries, Zillow.com vice president of data and analytics. "But even among those who say they're planning home-related activities this year, confidence appears strong despite continuing declines. Approximately one-third of homeowners say they are equally or more likely to sell their home, refinance or take out a home equity line of credit this year, which is essentially unchanged from sentiment in the fourth quarter."

Trulia Launches Ad Network

2008-05-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

It seems everyone is starting an ad network these days, and one of the most popular real estate Web sites that we submit all flyers to is jumping on the bandwagon.

Trulia, a residential real estate search engine and the fastest-growing U.S. real estate Web site, according to comScore, announced this week that it is launching a dedicated real estate ad network across targeted real estate Web sites. The sites, which include Oodle, Homes & Land and The Savvy Source, will expose advertisers to 10 million unique visitors per month.

"Recent years have seen a dramatic rise of the Web as a primary source of information and research for prospective home-buyers, and advertisers are adjusting accordingly," says Pete Flint, co-founder and CEO of Trulia. "The Trulia Ad Network facilitates this shift by making it simple for advertisers to achieve targeted reach across a large number of relevant, high-quality content sites, while helping publishers capitalize on the growing movement of real estate ad dollars online."

New Flyer Features

2008-05-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed? We’ve been adding more good stuff to our real estate flyers to help you capture more leads.

We’ve really stepped up the Features section of flyers by adding Census and City Data, Neighborhood Places and Services powered by Google Maps, and a link to places within walking distance of the property for sale – all to help potential customers get the information they need when searching for a home.

Take a look at a flyer from Travis, our May member of the month, for a great example of all the new features in action.

Travis Takes Top Honors for May

2008-05-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Our Member of the Month feature seems to have inspired many of you to take better advantage of all our site has to offer, including upgrading your profile with professional images. So this month was a tough decision, but we’ve decided to make Travis Newton our ClassifiedFlyerAds.com member of the month. Congrats Travis!

Travis is a fairly new customer who just started creating flyers with us a few months ago. But it wasn’t long before he began utilizing many of our other services. His blog profile page is syndicated to search directories every 30 days and includes his current listings, links to his Web site and even a YouTube video of a local commercial he's featured in! Check it out!

Travis also often takes advantage of our Ad2Cell feature, which allows him to capture leads in real time and which is also featured on our new map widget.

Go Travis! We hope he’s inspired you too to maximize your presence on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com.

Newspapers See Another Circulation Decline

2008-05-06T05:45:00.000-07:00

You know it’s true, but the numbers are confirming it more and more everyday. Online is the place to be!

The Audit Bureau of Circulation recently released its report of paid weekday circulation numbers for 530 newspapers across the country for the last six months through March. As it did the previous six months, paid circulation dropped once again, this time by 3.6%.

Big papers like the New York Times and Los Angeles Times also experienced declines, with the New York Times seeing a 3.9% drop and the LA Times seeing a 5.1% drop. USA Today and the Wall Street Journal were the only papers in the top 25 to see an increase in paid circulation.

So, remember, it’s time to put your classifieds online!

Searching Simplified

2008-05-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

We’ve made finding what you’re looking for on our site easier! We recently retooled the ClassifiedFlyerAds.com search function to make it simpler for visitors to our site to find your listings and other items they may be looking for.

On the left, you’ll see a list of categories to choose from. Once you’ve selected real estate for sale, autos, products, etc., you’ll be directed to more specific drop down lists. From there, you can choose the state and city in which you’re looking and then narrow your search by a variety of parameters, like keywords, price range and more.

Then, so you don’t have to repeat that every time you visit the site, we give you the option to receive an email or subscribe to an RSS feed to be updated whenever new flyers matching your search parameters are posted.

And everything has been optimized for the search engines to make your flyers even easier to find online.

More Mileage for Your Home Sale Flyer

2008-04-30T14:10:00.000-07:00

Now you’re getting even more mileage out of every home listing flyer you post to our site. We’ve recently added four new real estate directories, some of which are doing some really cool things, to our list to which all home sale flyers are posted. The new directories include Housefront, USAMLS, Properazzi and DotHomes. Let us tell you a little bit about them.

HouseFront provides consumers with access to property valuations, details, market trends and sales history on more than 100 million homes in the U.S. directly to their mobile phone or desktop computer.

USAMLS, a Free National Open Access Multiple Listing Service, allows realtors, builders and consumers to list both national and international properties for sale alongside a mapped location of the listing. The site also allows potential buyers to easily request more information from the listing brokerage.

The world’s largest property portal with listings in more than 50 countries, Properazzi aggregates millions of properties from just as many estate agents and property Web sites.

Finally, DotHomes is a real estate search engine that provides house hunters with access to more than one million results summaries that link to directly property details on the original listing broker Web sites.

We’re always looking for ways to give you more bang for your buck and get your listings out in front of more potential buyers.

Listen in for Some Great Tips on Our New Podcast

2008-04-25T08:26:00.000-07:00

That’s right – turn up your speakers. We’ve just produced the first in a series of podcasts to provide you with tips on how to maximize ClassifiedFlyerAds.com.

First up, we’re touching on the real estate market and discussing why now is the best time to use ClassifiedFlyerAds.com to spread the word about your home listings.

So listen to the podcast at your desk or download it to your iPod and get the scoop while driving, running or taking a walk.

Let us know what you think and what you’d like to hear in future editions!

Meet our Featured Member

2008-04-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

We get very excited when we see our members take full advantage of our services. So excited in fact, that we've decided to start highlighting a "Member of the Month," where we’ll recognize members who we feel really "get it".

This month, we are proud to announce our first recipient of this honor - Tina Merritt! If you take a look at her blog page, it's not hard to see why we chose her. Tina has her blog profile page completely filled out with a map, links to her other sites and blogs, RSS feed, blog posts, and listings. She has also taken advantage of many of our other essential services, such as video tours, page one placement SEO and Click-to-Call.

Tina will not only be featured on the blog, but also in our newsletter and on our Web site and will receive one month of her subscription at no cost. Congratulations Tina, and here's to your continued success with ClassifiedFlyerAds.com!

CFA Debuts on YouTube

2008-04-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

Yep, we’ve joined the likes of Oprah and the Queen of England with our very first video on YouTube. We created a short video that we think is fun to watch that highlights the benefits of using online flyers to market your services online. Check it out and let us know what you think! And stay tuned for future videos.